


A Dollar Forty

by SFDoll



Category: iZombie (TV)
Genre: Archived From Tumblr, Bleyton, Canonical Child Abuse, F/M, Gen, Horror, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Peyton Charles Is a Badass, Season 3 Spoilers, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-09 13:05:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11105160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SFDoll/pseuds/SFDoll
Summary: Sometimes there are monsters in the shadows.





	A Dollar Forty

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a discussion with Virgo-79

Blaine flicked on the lights as he came through the employee's entrance to Shady Plots with Peyton close on his heels. "Because it's just not the same thing!" he protested the frustration in his voice clear. 

"Don E. literally overdosed on that blue brain of yours!" Peyton fired back. She raised her hands in exasperation as he rolled his eyes. 

He reached out to take her coat, and Peyton shrugged out of it handing it to him to hang up for her. "It's still not an illicit substance," Blaine argued. "Look, brains are food to zombies... horrible tasting, mushy food. The memories are just about the only spice to the whole deal... if you added too much hotsauce to your eggs, there'd be consequences. It still doesn't make hotsauce a-"

His train of thought was interrupted by a small greenish piece of metal bouncing down the stairs, and they both turned to look. Blaine bent to pick it up, turning it over in his fingers as he examined the item in his hands. 

"It's a... penny?" Peyton questioned, wrinkling her nose as she tried to identify the small coin he grasped between his fingers. Blaine swallowed and stared at the old penny with dawning horror. Peyton realized his hand was shaking. 

They both jumped--their eyes drawn to the stairs--as a cascade of corroded pennies spilled from the shadows at the top of the staircase, jangling and ricocheting off one another as they tumbled down the steps towards the shocked duo. 

"It was a dollar forty-seven..." a rough voice called from the shadows, and Blaine pushed Peyton towards the door, a look of abject terror twisting his features. 

"Run!" Blaine told her, and then he was scrambling towards a red plastic bin covered in biohazard warnings and tucked beneath the open stairs. As he struggled to open the bin, a large thin figure sprang over the railing and landed on Blaine's back knocking him to the floor and forcing all the air from his lungs. Peyton could hear the crunch of Blaine's ribs shattering under the force of the impact. 

Peyton covered her mouth with her hand as she cried out, "Oh my God!" She recognized the tall, gaunt shape of Angus McDonough crouching over his son and snarling as he turned back at the sound of her voice, but his face was barely human now. His red and silver zombie eyes glared at her from sunken shadows, the black recesses adding to his already harsh and slightly skeletal countenance. His white skin was puffy and water-logged, and his wet suit hung in shreds over his tall frame. 

Peyton's eyes scanned over the room for anything she could use as a potential weapon, and Blaine struggled once again to dislodge the weight of the enraged zombie from his back so that he could break into the half-open bin. 

Angus spun Blaine onto his back, and Peyton could see that Blaine had gone into full-on zombie mode in his struggle for survival. He opened his mouth, preparing to taunt the irate zombie above him, but Angus grabbed him by the throat and squeezed before Blaine could get the words out. Angus's fist connected with the side of Blaine's face, and he drew his arm back bashing his knuckles into Blaine's mouth while Blaine tore at Angus's other hand clamped tightly across Blaine's windpipe. 

"I hope you got your money's worth," Angus snarled, "because however bad you thought you had it as a kid, it's nothing compared to what I'm about to do to you... I'm not sure if I'd rather break your rotten neck with my bare hands or bash your skull in till your ungrateful brains are smeared across this floor...." 

Peyton could see the red leaving Blaine's frightened eyes, and she realized that Blaine was reliving some horror from his past--too deep in the memories to defend himself now. She realized that unless she got to whatever he'd wanted from that plastic bin Blaine was about to die at the hands of his own father. 

She kicked her heels off and pulled her grey, pencil-skirt to the tops of her thighs, and she ran as fast as she could around the other side of the stairs. The red plastic slid easily across the smooth floor, and she pulled open the lid to find a cache of assorted firearms and ammunition. 

Beside her, Angus had reached a decision. He caught Blaine's hair in his tight grasp and slammed the back of Blaine's head into the tile floor with a loud crack. Peyton knew that Blaine couldn't survive too many blows like that, and she didn't have time to waste on finding ammunition for an unloaded weapon. So she grabbed the one weapon and ammo on the top of the pile that she knew at a glance she could load in a second. 

Bringing the weapon to bear she loudly screamed, "Hey! Over here, asshole!" And Angus paused his next attack to see what threat she could possibly pose. Peyton was holding a military issue flare gun on him, staring straight down the barrel as she squeezed the trigger. 

The Strontium Nitrate flare shot directly into Angus's left eye-socket, breaking through the thin bone and lodging itself in his brain, where the red flames ignited. He fell backwards, his final shrieks echoing off the stone walls as the sparks of the burning flare shot upwards from his thrashing form like some hideous parody of a roman candle as the intense heat caused his brain to cook. 

Peyton reached for Blaine's prone form, as he scrambled backwards away from the gruesome display. Grasping him from beneath the arms, she pulled him to her so that they were on the other side of the stairs with his bloody blond head resting on her lap as she knelt there and wrapped her arms protectively across his chest. 

Blaine's hands reached up and clutched Peyton's arms tightly, holding onto her for dear life, but he was unable to look away from the horrible sight in front of them. 

Peyton did her best to examine Blaine's injuries. Zombies didn't bleed much, thankfully, so any bleeding had stopped almost as soon as it began. The left side of his face was bruised and a bit bloody from around his eye to his mouth, but she knew that it would heal in a matter of hours. His ribs and the back of his skull would take a bit longer, so he should probably stay out of sight for the next day. 

She waited a few moments for Blaine to grow calmer, before she excused herself to open the large loading doors and let in a little fresh air. While the chemical fumes might not affect Blaine, she knew inhaling it wouldn't do her any good. The night breeze was a relief, and she took several deep breaths before turning back to the scene of devastation in Blaine's embalming room. 

"You okay?" she asked, as a shell-shocked Blaine raised himself to a sitting position pressed against the wall as far away from his father as possible. 

He tore his eyes away from the corpse burning itself out under the metal embalming table, and he licked his lips as he stared uncertainly at Peyton. He opened his mouth to answer, and his eyes slid away from hers unable to look her in the eye as he lied, "Yeah. I'm fine." 

Peyton decided to table that problem for later. "We can't have cops involved in this. You're gonna heal way too fast, and he...." She looked back at Angus's barely human profile. "Once the fire's out, I'm gonna need you to help me get him into the cremation chamber," Peyton announced trying to remain as practical and matter of fact as she could manage. 

Blaine looked at her for a moment before nodding his agreement, and taking a calming breath he allowed Peyton to help him to his feet and shuffle him outside into the night air away from the carnage--silently sneaking glances at Peyton when she wasn't looking and thinking to himself that he'd never seen anything more beautiful and heroic in his life than Peyton coming to his rescue. "You really do look good on a white horse," he told her softly.


End file.
